MJ Smith (Peters)

I am interested in shaking up the way we do things on an industrial scale.

I told the board of one company to develop a fire detector for dog owners. One year later, I pitched an audience of 60 senior execs on an IoT sensor for live fish transport. The first thing got me laughed out of the room. The second one won my team 1st place in a pitch contest and $150k in funding.

I learned from both experiences, so I wouldn't change a thing.

It turns out that the fish project was ROI positive in under 5 months. That success was enough to propel me into my first leadership role, heading up marketing for Firetrace.

As the company's first ever VP of Marketing, I changed how the organization defines marketing - from the brochure department to a key player in strategy and revenue.

Along the way, I became the first customer of Refine Labs. After working with them to build a high performing digital demand gen engine, I decided to join the team in March 2021. I took over sales and marketing leadership from the founder and led both functions through a period of significant growth (5x revenue in 12 months).

Most recently, I got the opportunity to join CoLab Software, where we are changing the way mechanical engineering teams work together. CoLab empowers engineers to build the future faster through streamlined design review and collaboration.